Inside The 1890 House: Exploring Cortland's Gilded Age Mansion Before the Lights Go Out

Before you can investigate a location, you have to understand it. That's something I've believed since the earliest days of TAPS, and it's why we always make time to walk a building in the daylight before we ever set up a single piece of equipment. The 1890 House Museum in Cortland, New York gave us a lot to absorb — and trust me, once you step through the front door of this place, you understand immediately why people talk about it the way they do.

I've walked through hundreds of historic buildings over the years, and I'd be lying if I said they all leave an impression. This one does. The 1890 House was built during the Gilded Age for industrialist Chester F. Wickwire, a man who clearly had both the means and the taste to build something extraordinary. From the outside, the massive stone exterior and prominent tower give it a presence that's hard to ignore. But it's what's inside that really gets to you — the detailed woodwork, the elaborate room layouts, the craftsmanship in every corner. This wasn't just a house. It was a statement.

When I go into a location like this, my first priority isn't the paranormal. My first priority is the history. Who lived here? What did they experience? What events played out inside these walls? Chester Wickwire built this home for his family, and like any family that lived in a place for generations, they left something behind — not necessarily in a supernatural sense, but in the architecture, the objects, the stories that the staff and historians carry forward. Walking through each room with that context changes how you see everything. A creaking floorboard means something different when you know the age of the wood. A cold draft reads differently when you understand the layout of the original heating system. That's not me being dismissive of the paranormal — that's me doing my job correctly.

This episode is specifically the tour and history portion of our visit to The 1890 House. We wanted to bring you along for that walk-through before the investigation begins, because I think it matters. Too many people show up to a location already convinced it's haunted, already primed to interpret every shadow and every sound as evidence. I've never worked that way. You have to earn a paranormal conclusion. You have to rule out everything you can rule out first. And to do that, you need to know the building. You need to know its quirks, its history, its layout. The 1890 House has plenty of all three, and this tour gave us exactly the foundation we needed going into the night investigation.

What struck me most during the tour was the sheer scale of the history contained in this place. The Wickwire family, the Gilded Age context, the transition the home has made from private residence to museum — all of it layers on top of each other in a way that makes the building feel genuinely alive with the past. The staff here clearly care deeply about preserving that history, and the information they shared with us was invaluable. By the time we finished the tour, I felt like I knew this house. And knowing a house is the only honest way to investigate one. The investigation comes next — and going in informed always makes for better science.

The 1890 House is one of the most architecturally impressive locations we've visited, and its history runs deep enough to make any investigation worth taking seriously. Whether the paranormal claims hold up under scrutiny is a question the investigation will answer — but the history alone makes this place worth your time. Stay subscribed, because the lights go out next.